The League of Wives

by Heath Hardage Lee

  By the end of 1968, most of the wives had relegated the “keep quiet” policy to the trash bin. Even highly patriotic and rule-conscious Jane reveled in her new government-approved freedom of speech.

  On the West Coast, Sybil took a page from the civil rights and feminist movements spreading across the country. “Sit-ins” had become a well-known technique used by activist groups to gain attention for their causes. Sybil’s version of this activism was to coordinate a grassroots “telegram-in,” where she urged POW/MIA wives and family members to deluge newly elected President Nixon with telegrams, reminding him to put the POW/MIA situation at the very top of his agenda. The new president received more than two thousand telegrams from Sybil and her cohorts.30

  Nixon quickly realized the power these women held in their hands. He and his staff took pains to reply personally to each telegram. Phyllis Galanti got not one but three replies to her telegram: from Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks.31

  Nixon and his new staff deemed it crucial to win the war of domestic public opinion. Integral to this victory was the support of those who could unify the country through the POW/MIA cause. Sybil, Jane, Janie, Louise, Dot, Phyllis, Helene, and hundreds of other POW/MIA wives and families were forming a powerful and influential lobby that the new Nixon administration desperately needed on its side.

  What lengths would the new government go to to support them? Would it be any better than the previous administration? Was Nixon really “the One”?

  Eleven

  GO PUBLIC

  THE NEWLY INSTALLED NIXON administration had gotten the message loud and clear from the POW/MIA wives that they had better take notice of their husbands’ plight. Right now. The women and their families were Nixon supporters and voters—at least for the moment—and the administration wanted to keep them in that camp.

  Sybil was pleased to see the direct results of her January telegram-in. “I was encouraged to be notified that a group from the Nixon administration in Washington was coming to San Diego (to the Naval Air Station Miramar Officers’ Club) on March 26 to talk to us about the prisoners and missing. What a change—they were actually coming to talk to us without our having to browbeat them!”1

  Attendance at the meeting was restricted to wives and parents of the POWs and MIAs from the area. It was to be held on a “no publicity” basis, and Sybil noted in her diary that she warned all invited attendees, “I cannot impress upon you enough that this is a privileged meeting and that all discussion pertaining to it should be carefully guarded.”2 The remnants of the “keep quiet” policy remained in her comments, but they were fraying and thin as old lace curtains.

  Averell “the Crocodile” Harriman persisted in holding fast with his reptilian jaws to the old ways, despite the advent of a new presidential administration. Even now, he was convinced that his quiet diplomacy would work. But now, in 1969, the wives and even the staff within the government were realizing that Harriman’s approach had become a form of appeasement.

  Harriman had heard rumors of the new administration’s plans to “go public” about the POW/MIA plight. Before he left office (he would be replaced by Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson on February 4), the crusty grandee called Melvin Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defense, to warn him off this idea.3 Laird listened to Harriman rant, but he would not reveal what he planned to do. He decided to do more research before he took any action.4

  Laird selected a young man from the publishing business named Richard “Dick” Capen for a data-collecting mission. Capen had worked for Copley Press, a newspaper publisher in San Diego, and was used to taking the pulse of those in the news. Laird asked his aide to apply his listening and observational skills to the POW/MIA wives and families. Capen would go to San Diego in March and take the temperature of the POW and MIA wives, parents, and families.5 Laird would be shocked at what Capen soon found out.

  * * *

  The atmosphere in the Miramar Officers’ Club was electric. Buzzing with angry POW and MIA wives and parents, it was a hornet’s nest of resentment erupting with repressed feelings and emotions. Years of accumulated government doubletalk had demoralized the group. But now they had a chance to express their concerns to a captive audience. This time the captives were the bureaucrats themselves.

  Capen was only thirty-four, still a young man but confident of his skills and background. Frank Sieverts, special assistant to the deputy secretary of state and a POW from the Korean War, accompanied him. They had all arrived at Miramar to reassure the San Diego–area wives and families about the government’s position on the POW/MIA issue. If Capen, Sieverts, and company had expected a warm welcome, they were speedily disabused of this notion.

  The POW/MIA wives and families had had enough of the previous administration’s vague directives and lack of response to their situation. By now many of the women had been single parents for three to four years. They were the heads of their households by default. Many had struggled financially, and all had suffered emotionally since their husbands’ shoot-downs.

  The white gloves were off, and nothing would have pleased the group more than to throttle the slick government reps who seemed to think they knew it all. “The Washington Road Show,” as the wives cynically referred to these representatives sent to them from the State and Defense Departments, had five hundred angry and frustrated Navy wives from the San Diego area, as well as Air Force and Marine wives from the Los Angeles area, to answer to tonight. The lions were about to be unleashed upon the government’s unsuspecting gladiators.

  An Air Force wife named Pat Burns was among the first to get up at the meeting, unveiling a framed painting she had created that she said represented the lack of empathy from the top Air Force officials. Based on her own experience with the military, Pat declared that the motto “The Air Force takes care of its own” was a joke. She slammed the painting on the floor in front of the astonished visitors, screaming, “Take it back to D.C. and give it to the generals running the war!” With that, she promptly stomped out of the room. (No description remains of this painting, but the artist’s conduct indicated its theme quite clearly.) After a stunned silence, wife after wife forced the representatives to confront the truth: the military’s “keep quiet” policy was a failure. It was only further endangering the POWs and MIAs by shrouding their situation in secrecy.6

  Sybil added her voice to those of the other women at the Miramar meeting, stating her deep reservations concerning the “keep quiet” policy, noting that the longer the Vietnamese held the men, tortured them, starved them, and denied them medical treatment, the more likely they were to die in prison. If the American government planned to bring the men back alive, they had better publicize their plight to the world.7

  Sybil spoke about her own negative experience with the “keep quiet” policy, noting that there had been no mail from the POWs since October. She confronted Capen, saying, “We need a change of policy by our Government. Things are getting worse instead of better. There is less mail instead of more. We want our Government leaders to stand up and criticize the North Vietnamese for not abiding by the Geneva Convention.”8 Due to their secret coding and undercover work with Boroughs, Sybil and many of the women present that night knew far more than anyone from the Road Show about what was going on in the North Vietnamese prison camps.

  While confronting the Nixon administration’s delegates, Sybil and Karen were also tape-recording them. Their accomplice? Bob Boroughs, from Naval Intelligence. The maverick intelligence officer had rigged the two ladies up with tape recorders and speakers, which Sybil and Karen cleverly pinned to their bras. The government departments all distrusted one another, so the only way for the Navy to get an accurate report was to spy on the meeting. (Boroughs probably did this on his own without authorization.) Since the government was so clueless, Boroughs and the women he worked with decided it was time to do whatever it took t
o get the full picture. Sybil and Karen didn’t hesitate to comply with his taping request.

  After Sybil spoke, she noticed that Capen kept staring at her. She started to worry about the tape recorder bulge in her bra—was it obvious? She also realized that her tape and Karen’s were running out. Ever resourceful, Sybil held up a printed sign that read, WE NEED A RESTROOM BREAK, and Capen promptly declared an intermission.9

  The two women ran to the bathroom together, most likely giggling nervously, and flipped their tapes over to record the second half of the meeting. Other wives and parents got up and yelled some more. The delegates, by now speechless, must have known that if they wanted to make it out of the meeting alive, they had better relay the wives’ message back to D.C., pronto.

  Capen vividly remembered the women’s anger that day: “It was therapeutic and we owed it to them. They needed to vent.”10 But what he had witnessed was far more than just venting. The women knew the American prisoners’ situation was deteriorating rapidly—their “venting” was a desperate cry for help before it was too late.

  The young State Department bureaucrat returned to Washington with his attitude duly adjusted. He continued his research on the issue and was horrified by what he found out. On a Department of Defense weekend retreat in early May, he presented his findings to his boss, Laird. After reviewing the evidence, Capen learned what some of the POW wives already knew: that the men were being tortured and denied proper medical treatment, food, clothing, and mail privileges. They were often not even identified as being POWs. “When he heard Capen’s findings at the conference, Laird bellowed, ‘By God, we’re going to go public.’”11 Capen made sure to vet the idea with the military head honchos, especially Admiral John S. McCain Jr., whose son John remained a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “Whatever you feel is right, do it,” he replied. Now they had the blank check they needed to move forward.12

  Capen and Laird made it their joint mission to encourage and sustain the Nixon administration’s focus on the POW/MIA issue while National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger simultaneously juggled delicate negotiations with the North Vietnamese. The POW/MIA wives and families whom Capen had gone to placate in March had taught him and Laird what they needed to know on that issue. Now the women had gained the national platform they needed to amplify their message.

  Despite this breakthrough, the POW situation remained urgent. The women’s tape recorders were not the only things running out of time.

  * * *

  On April 5, Sybil wrote a very frank letter to Admiral Moorer’s executive assistant, admitting that at home she did not always display the self-control she did when in public. “At home I rant, rave, cry, throw dishes and hurl invectives at both Washington and Hanoi.” Sybil also mentioned her “spies at the Pentagon” and her desire—indeed, requirement—that she meet with Nixon soon.13

  Sybil was clearly letting the Navy and the government know that she had power, influence, and the ear of the POW and MIA families. Her thinly veiled references in her letter indicated that she and others might blow the whistle further if the government did not move quickly on the POW/MIA issue. She now had high-profile allies in the Pentagon in Laird, Capen, and Sieverts. Sybil received a speedy reply assuring her that things were indeed moving in the direction she desired. And then she got a message that she could not have imagined possible even a year earlier under LBJ.

  Early on Monday morning, May 19, Dick Capen and Frank Sieverts phoned Sybil. Capen did most of the talking, in an excited manner. “Before you leave for school this morning, we wanted you to know that here in Washington, in just a few minutes, the secretary of defense is going to do the thing you’ve been wanting him to do for so long. He’s going to publicly denounce the North Vietnamese for their treatment of the American prisoners and for their violation of the Geneva Convention.”14 All the POW and MIA wives’ hard work was finally beginning to pay off. It was unbelievable that the government was finally listening, Sybil thought. “That was a real switch … The administration was publicly abandoning the ‘keep quiet’ policy as its predecessors should have done years before.”15

  In his press release that day and in his televised address, Laird broke the government’s silence: “The North Vietnamese have claimed that they are treating our men humanely. I am distressed by the fact that there is clear evidence that this is not the case … The United States Government has urged that the enemy respect the requirements of the Geneva Convention. This they have refused to do.” Laird continued to tick through the list of North Vietnamese war crimes, including its leaders’ refusal to: provide a list of imprisoned and missing men; treat and release the sick and injured Americans; allow the free exchange of mail between prisoners and their families; and allow the inspection of the prisoner camps by an impartial organization such as the Red Cross.

  Even more affecting were the graphic photos of prisoners that Capen distributed to the press that day. Obtained on the black market in North Vietnam, the pictures showed prisoners with injured and atrophied limbs, and men in solitary confinement. It was all out there now for the world to judge. It made only a minor splash in the American media at first, but the ripple effect in the wider world would be significant. In honor of July 4, the North Vietnamese decided to release three POWs. These men would prove to be perhaps the most valuable intelligence asset the Americans obtained during the course of the war.16

  As she drove down the sunny California highway to her teaching job, Sybil suddenly realized that today (May 19) just happened to be North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. She must have smiled to herself, thinking that the Laird press conference was the perfect gift for “Uncle Ho.”17

  * * *

  As Sybil readied for her annual sojourn to Sunset Beach, Connecticut, she got a call from her friend and fellow POW wife Karen Butler. Karen’s sister had a contact with the West Coast editor of Look magazine in L.A., and she arranged an appointment for Sybil and Karen on June 20. Look was a slightly more literate version of today’s People magazine, featuring short articles and lots of color photos. The covers in 1969 featured John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mia Farrow, and the Smothers Brothers.18

  When they arrived in L.A., both women were impressed by the luxurious Look offices, with their giant glass windows offering panoramic views of the city. Karen and Sybil spent more than an hour talking to Look’s editor about the POW mistreatment. He seemed empathetic but a bit bored. This was clearly not a story he thought would work for his magazine. Sybil was distraught: all this time and effort, and no one seemed to care about the men’s plight. As she and Karen gathered their things to leave, the editor asked where he might get in touch with them on the off chance the magazine decided to run something. Both the women said to contact the secretary for the League of Wives in San Diego.

  Flying home to San Diego that evening, Sybil and Karen had an epiphany. Sybil wrote in her diary: “We reasoned that we needed a national organization if we were going to get national publicity.” They had already worked together with women all over the country for the telegraph-ins to the new president as well as to the Vietnamese embassy in Paris. Letter-writing campaigns were taking place all over the country, too, coordinated by POW and MIA wives to raise awareness of the situation. Now, Sybil felt, “all we really needed was a name. On the airplane that day we decided to call ourselves ‘THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF FAMILIES OF AMERICAN PRISONERS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.’ We felt the MIAs were implicit in this group, and Karen and I agreed I would be the National Coordinator.”19

  Later in July, Karen received a call from the editor, declining to do an article on the POWs or even the San Diego League. The POWs had been adequately covered in Look and Life magazines already, he explained. And the regional League might be better covered by a newspaper article. Karen’s heart sank, but then she remembered the new angle she and Sybil had conceived on the plane ride home from L.A. in June. She “casually mentioned the National League. This was followed by a noticeable increase of interest in his v
oice. He asked if I would call him when the organization was completed.”20 The women had found the key that unlocked their all-access press pass.

  The National League, just an idea in the two POW wives’ minds a few weeks earlier, quickly became a reality. Sybil later recalled, “Never was an organization launched more efficiently. The fact that we paid our own expenses and didn’t know the first thing about the rules of organizing were a saving grace.”21

  The POW/MIA wives, led by Sybil, took heart as they gained power first with their new government platform and next through their media contacts. Soon they would see themselves in Look, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, and Good Housekeeping, as well as their local newspapers. Television interviews followed. All forms of media were finally picking up the story.22

  It didn’t hurt the wives that they represented the late-sixties traditional feminine ideal so well. The New York Times’ “Food, Fashion, Family, Furnishings” reporter certainly took note of this—they were an easy sell to the American public. “The wives, for the most part, are slender, gracious and attractive. One man who met several of them described them as ‘pretty—like airline stewardesses.’ Some of them were stewardesses; Mrs. Tschudy, for example, flew for American Airlines for 10 months before she was married.”23 This favorable confluence of events finally began to push the POW and MIA wives forward, out of the shadows and into the media spotlight. Now the ladies were ready for their close-up.

  * * *

  In June of 1969, Louise Mulligan was the first POW/MIA wife on the East Coast to go public, in the Norfolk Ledger-Star. Before she did so, she sat her six boys (ages seven to eighteen at this point) down and warned them that their lives were about to change. Her decision would affect them all and put them all into the same media spotlight the wives were stepping into. She worried about her sons and about her husband’s reaction to her public fight when he returned. But the passing years without her husband had driven her to push the very buttons the State Department had originally warned Jane Denton not to mess with.